Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Chuck Wagon Church

I dug this up on the internet somewhere... What a blessing it is to have the Chuck Wagon Church right here in Scottsbluff! We know so many people you have fed. What a blessing you are to the community. Thank you Pastor Al!

Time to report in on what the Lord has accomplished over the summer. Last year we sent 45 kids to camp. This year we sent 54. The best part of this equation is that last year we had only two from Pine Ridge. This year that figure was 19. For the first time ever we did a camp exclusively for the Reservation kids. Seven or eight gave their hearts to the Lord, and nearly all dedicated themselves to getting their family saved, and praying for their family and friends. There is a sense in which the old Passover still applies. They had to take a lamb for each house and the lamb was sacrificed for the family. Someone in the family has to intercede and witness to the family. Has to be the lamb for the house. I told them the true story of a woman I knew who was saved when she was only eight years old. Her family wasn’t Christians, and she had no church upbringing. She had no idea about prayer or how it worked, she just knew she was saved and that her family needed to be saved. She would go home and go upstairs to her room, open the window, lean out and yell up at God. (That was her method of praying.) “God, save my mom and dad.! Save My brothers and sisters! Save my neighbors!) Needless to say God answered her prayers. In her teens she began bible studies, and gathered in the neighbors. When the group got to 20 or 30 she would enlist a preacher. By this method she started seventeen churches. I told them that someone had to be the one to pray, and lead them to Jesus. The next night I had a rapper from Denver sing and give his testimony. He had been a major druggie, and had gotten so bad that he thought he was dying. Satan appeared to him and demons were trying to drag him down to hell. He was screaming, and trying to break away, but couldn’t. He saw Jesus and that scared him even worse because he knew Jesus wasn’t pleased with the way he was living. But he cried out to Jesus and Jesus saved him. His twin brother was also a druggie, and he began to pray and witness to him and to his family. He now ministers to others. He told the kids the same thing that I had the night before. You have to pray for your families and witness to them. You have to be the messenger of Jesus to them. He had the children lift their hands and pray for their families. Almost every child had both hands up praying for their families. Here is a neat follow up on that same story. We dropped two of the children off in the country because they lived out of town. A man happened to be visiting when they arrived home and told us this story. He said the little guy came into the house raised his hands and said “Praise the Lord!” Went over to the CD player took out what they were playing and put in his Christian rap CD and said “We’re going to listen to Christian music.” We are now planning a rap concert in two high schools on the reservation, one at Pine Ridge and one at Allen. We are hoping the teens will attend because of the testimony of the teens who went to camp. Thank you for all your help. We did all this at no cost to any of the children.

Had a guy fresh out of prison that needed food and a place to stay. People referred him to our church, and we talked a bit. He had no religious background, but wanted to get right with God, and get his life straight. We prayed together for his salvation. Then I got him some food and got him a place to stay while he looked for a job. The dinner count has gone up this past month to around 95 each Saturday. The Sunday count is still over 200. I think October will start our 11th year. It is amazing to me that we have probably fed over 150,000 free meals, and gave out enough boxed food to feed an additional 24,000 people without taking an offering, and without government help. That is the Lord! All our needs are being met, and the Lord doesn’t seem to be affected by the sluggish economy.

Again, my thanks to you for your gifts, and I ask God to bless you richly for all you have done, and all you are doing, and all you will do.

We have a teen living with us and are scheduled for our first parent teacher meeting in nearly a quarter of a century. I sort of slipped into the twenty First Century through the back door having lived on a farm most of my life. I am familiar with teeth of all kinds and could give a good guess at a horses age by looking at its teeth. I’ve eaten berries of every description, and raised gardens and done construction, but lately have found out that a blackberry is not edible, blue tooth is not a disease, and I-Pods are not used in construction or found in a garden. This does tend to make a person a little apprehensive when you realize you are part of a triangle ( teacher, student, parent) responsible for some lads educational progress. How he came to be at our house is a story that started nine years ago when he was only eight. Harry and I were going door to door calling on people. We stopped at a house where there was an old man and old woman and the old man’s middle aged daughter. The old man was sitting head down slobbering on his shirt. The old woman was almost blind, and the daughter was suffering from kidney failure. The house was mess, and filthy. Food and older food was on the table among a mixture of parakeet droppings, and used bird seed. Cigarettes and ashes filled ash trays and tin cans. We talked to them and prayed with them and led them to Christ. They started coming to church except for the old man. He went into the hospital and hovered near death for several weeks. We and the church continued to pray for him. He recovered and became a regular church attendee. He quit slobbering got his mind back and attended until he went into the veterans home four or so years later. The old lady became so special to all of us that we still talk about her respectfully to this day. She would come up after services and say, “May I have the list of prayer requests?” I said, “Blanche, you can’t see well enough to even read this list, and my writing is so bad you couldn’t read it if you could see.” She said, “Oh, I don’t read it, I just hold it up to God and pray over it. He knows what’s on it.” She would take that list week after week. The daughter, Vivian, was on dialysis and was weak a lot of the time, but she helped us do puppet programs and was very faithful to do all she could. In addition she went to her neighbors and invited them to church. It was she who invited the eight year old Ben to church. She died a few months before her father, Ralph, but when I went to visit her at her home, it was clean, her bible was open on the table, and Christian music was playing on the radio. (She didn’t know I was coming or I might have expected that.)
Ben was from a dysfunctional family with a history of drug abuse and alcoholism. He came to church and gave his heart to the Lord. He always helped in any way he could. He helped my wife with the children’s church and still does. He helped serve in the kitchen, and still does. Recently one of his brothers died from alcohol at age 24. Ben couldn’t even inform his mother because they had not heard from her in years, and had no idea where she lived, or if she lived. He said this, “If it hadn’t been for Vivian, I don’t know where I’d be today.” If there is a lesson in all this, its that if someone blind and someone dying can find a way to serve God and make a difference in a life, then surely we can do something.
When the boy’s father and stepmother moved away, he wanted to stay here and finish school. His sister who also came to church was the first in a family totaling fourteen to finish High School. Ben will be the second. When they first came to church they were both failing every class. Now he is a B plus student and plans to go to college. There were many weeks when he was the sole support of his family. He went to school, worked full time at Taco Bell, and slept when he could. Many times he would get home after 1:30 A.M. It is hard to imagine a family where income is more important than education, and the head of the house would put the burden of supporting the family on a sixteen year old. Sometimes it is humorous. For instance, we had a storm, and it knocked out our electricity for a while. When everything went black, he immediately asked if we had paid the electric bill.
We feel privileged to be able to help him. Maybe we can finish up what Vivian started.

Thanks again for all you do!
Sincerely! Al

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We will continue to pray for you and your wonderful ministry Al!
Brian Hale